President Obama to Bashar Assad: Keep your promises

The United States and Russia announced a tentative deal Saturday to resolve the ongoing international crisis over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

Under the draft agreement hammered out between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Syria will give up all its chemical weapons stockpiles by mid-2014 and allow international inspectors into the country by November of this year.

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Timeline of Syria crisis response

The deal eases weeks of pressure on President Barack Obama to act against the Syrian regime’s apparent use of chemical weapons on civilians — bringing to a close a tense standoff that brought the United States to the brink of military action in the Middle East.

”This framework provides the opportunity for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons in a transparent, expeditious, and verifiable manner, which could end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but to the region and the world,” Obama said in a statement. “The international community expects the Assad regime to live up to its public commitments.”

The president also said he was reserving the right to act militarily if the agreement falls apart.

“The United States will continue working with Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the United Nations and others to ensure that this process is verifiable, and that there are consequences should the Assad regime not comply with the framework agreed today. And, if diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act,” Obama said.

Before heading out for golf Saturday morning, Obama was briefed on the deal by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, according to a pool report. The president also spoke with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power and with Kerry, offering him congratulations on hammering out the pact, the report said.

“Actions will matter more than words,” Kerry said in Geneva, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. “We have committed here to a standard that says ‘verify and verify.’”

Pentagon press secretary George Little echoed Obama and Kerry’s statements, adding that the military hasn’t made changes to its force posture yet.

“The credible threat of military force has been key to driving diplomatic progress, and it’s important that the Assad regime lives up to its obligations under the framework agreement,” Little said in a statement.

Speaking in Geneva, where he negotiated the agreement with Lavrov, Kerry credited both the threat of force and the frenzied diplomacy on the part of both the United States and Russia for the breakthrough.

“I have no doubt that the combination of the threat of force and the willingness to pursue diplomacy helped bring us to this moment,” Kerry said.

The first tentative outlines of a deal emerged only after Kerry spoke off-the-cuff in Europe last week — suggesting that the only way the Syrian government could avoid a punitive strike was to hand over their stockpiles to the international community.

Though aides initially said he was not speaking for the White House and was simply making a rhetorical point, the Russians leapt on the suggestion. Within hours, the Kerry plan was embraced as the best possible solution by White House officials and by congressional leaders eager to dodge a vote on approving a military action highly unpopular with the war-weary American public.

Congressional leaders in both parties had been struggling to find enough votes among the rank-and-file for a resolution authorizing military force. Kerry’s plan — and Saturday’s announcement of a tentative deal — spares members of Congress for the time being from a vote on an unpopular use-of-force resolution.

In announcing the deal, Kerry thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government for its work on the agreement.

“Diplomacy requires willing partners. And I want to thank President Putin for his willingness to pick up the possibility of negotiation the end of Syrian weapons of mass destruction.”

Under the terms of the deal, which were released by the State Department, the United States and Russia will submit a plan to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the next few days “setting down special procedures for expeditious destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons program and stringent verification thereof.”

In the text of the “framework” released by the State Department early Saturday, Russia and the United States commit to seek action by the U.N. Security Council to create consequences if Syria doesn’t fully comply.

“In the event of non-compliance, including unauthorized transfer, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in Syria, the UN Security Council should impose measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter,” the U.S.-Russia deal says, referring to provisions that can be used to provide international authority for the use military force.